It’s not about how you achieve your dreams. It’s about how you lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.

Randy Pausch was diag­nosed with Pan­cre­atic Cancer. Anyone who knows any­thing about this cancer (which is sur­pris­ingly little, as it turns out) knows that being diag­nosed with this type of cancer is basi­cally being handed a death war­rant. Randy had three chil­dren - 6, 4, and 2 if I recall cor­rectly - and the thing that ripped him apart the most was that he wouldn’t be able to be there as they grew up. His youngest chil­dren would prob­a­bly have no memory of him whatsoever.

As luck would have it, the uni­ver­sity he worked at - Carnegie Mellon Uni­ver­sity - had a series of lec­tures called “The Last Lecture” and asked him to do one. He real­ized that this would be a way to immor­tal­ize him­self a bit for his chil­dren. He deliv­ered the lec­ture, explain­ing how to achieve one’s child­hood dreams, how to help others achieve theirs, and how to live one’s life.

The Last Lec­ture, the book that is, is not a ver­ba­tim tran­script of the lec­ture, though that would have been rather good in and of itself. No, the book has every­thing the deliv­ered lec­ture had, but it also had sto­ries that took place before and after said lec­ture. The book reveals even more about what an extra­or­di­nary person Randy actu­ally was. I know it sounds corny, but as it turns out he really was a fan­tas­tic individual.

I’m not trying to gush over the late Randy Pausch, far from it in fact. What I’m trying to say is that every­thing he says in his book is a direct exten­sion of him; his past, his present, and the future he never has. His words of wisdom will most likely be quoted for years to come by par­ents to their chil­dren, and they may not even remem­ber where they got it from.

My only com­plaint with the book is that it is too short. The reason I say this is because he shouldn’t of had to write a book, but because he was put into this posi­tion by things beyond his con­trol, he did what he could. If and when his chil­dren read The Last Lec­ture, I hope that they can take away from it as much as the rest of the world has. The book is a per­fect blend of sorrow and schaden­freude. You’re damned happy you’re not him, but your dev­as­tated that this man is dead. I can hon­estly say that read­ing through this book brought me to tears more than once. It moved me very, very deeply.

It’s just as fan­tas­tic as the lec­ture, but deliv­ers even more per­sonal sto­ries and feel­ings to the reader. It’s as tragic as it is mag­nif­i­cent, and I mean it when I say that every­one should read this book.

Everyone.

11/10 - Just cause I friggin’ can.

Also, if you’re inter­ested in research­ing Pan­cre­atic Cancer, here are some resources:

• Lust­garten Foun­da­tion for Pan­cre­atic Cancer Reasearch
• Pan­cre­atic Cancer Action Net­work
• and if you have some spare change: http://​www.​first​giv​ing.​com/​r​a​n​d​y​p​ausch